Iraqi actor Wissam Diaa, who played the role of Taha in the film, said:Hanging gardens“The work is his first film championship, and his first meeting with director Ahmed Yassin Al-Daradji was in a cafe, where they knew each other as director and actor, and that after a whole year of this meeting, Al-Daradji asked him to be one of the heroes of the film, but when he read The script he was afraid to introduce it for the first time because he lives in a society where expressing an opinion is not easy, which also made him fear for his family, until he reached an agreement with Al-Daradji to protect him from any effect of the presentation of the film, and then proceeded to participate in the film to find that the personality he presented with the work is similar to his personality in the reality, just as he is a young man who hides his desires and is afraid of his ambition and works in a difficult field, like so many young people in the Arab world.
Wissam pointed out that Taha’s character is that of a young man who always feels guilty, and the most difficult scenes for him in the film were the scene of the confrontation between him and the child, Asaad, because the child is well aware of what Taha is doing and understands his motivations and fears, and the confrontation between them confronted Taha with his truth and formed the moment of explosion.
Wissam Diaa explained that the absence of women in the film is due to the nature of the film’s location, as it takes place in a place where women are marginalized and oppressed, adding that the character of the pilgrim or “the pilgrim” does not have to be real, but it is possible that he represents one of the parties or himself in the story or deify the viewer at will.
Film about the Hanging Gardens shown in Red Sea Festival The jury of the festival in the second edition was presided by the international director and writer Oliver Stone, by the actress Nelly Karim, by the Tunisian director Kawthar Ben Haniyeh, by the Georgian director Levan Kogwa Shevili and finally by the Palestinian actor Ali Suleiman.
The festival screened 131 feature and short films from 61 countries, in 41 languages, works that bear the imprint of a group of ancient names in the history of cinema, as well as many young talents, it also hosted 34 world premieres, 17 film previews Arabs and 47 film premieres from the Middle East and North Africa.
